Tiger Woods returns to Bay Hill back on top of the game of golf

Woods will seek his eighth win in the Arnold Palmer Invitational

It's been awhile, but Tiger Woods returns to Bay Hill this week in a familiar position.

For the first time since 2009, Woods arrives at the Arnold Palmer Invitational as defending champion, the odds-on favorite and playing the best golf on the planet.

The talk this week will not center on injuries, scandal, slumps or swing changes — the topics du jour during recent visits to Bay Hill.

It will be all about golf. Finally. Just the way Woods likes it.

Woods' wire-to-wire win at Doral is his second victory in three stroke-play events in 2013. A win at Bay Hill would position him to have one of those monster seasons he used to reel off with machine-like regularity before his personal life and golf game came unglued.

Surely, no one would bet against Woods to win this week.

Arnie's place has been Tiger's playground — site of seven of his 76 career wins on the PGA Tour, including 2012 when Woods captured his first official victory in 30 months.

"It's hard to believe," Orlando's Charles Howell III said of Woods' track record at Bay Hill. "I haven't even won that many times in my career.

"I think a lot of Tiger's achievements are underrated and underappreciated, and that's certainly one of them."

Howell, Woods' friend, has $25 million in career earnings, name recognition and a textbook golf swing. Now into his 14th season, the 33-year-old Howell also has two wins in 372 events, or five fewer victories than Woods has in 16 starts at Bay Hill.

Even Woods' contemporaries enshrined in the Hall of Fame have been helpless to watch Woods tee it up in a parallel universe much of his 17-year career.

"Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els are his closest rivals," said former Tour pro Notah Begay III, a college teammate with Woods at Stanford. "They're 10 majors behind him."

But the last time Woods came to Bay Hill, those days of dominance were behind him and Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 majors seemed safe.

At times, some observers openly wondered if Woods was finished.

One of them, Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, said recently, "Since Tiger came back in 2010, none of us has a handle on him."

Now, Tiger looks like Tiger again. And Jack's record is firmly back in play for the 37-year-old Woods, who has been stuck on 14 majors since he won the 2008 U.S. Open.

Playing that week with a ruptured ACL in his left knee, Woods was invincible back then. He had talent, resolve and a flair for the dramatic unlike any golfer in history.

And Bay Hill would serve as the backdrop for some of Tiger's seminal moments.

Woods won four years in a row (2000-03) by a combined 20 strokes, a four-year stretch that featured 24 overall victories for Woods, including six major championships.

"We may never see that again," Begay said. "He was so dominant and had such a presence out here that I think players pretty had resigned themselves to the fact that, 'I have to play my best in order to beat him and he has to be a little off.'"

Even when his competition was on, Woods would find a way to win.

In 2008 at Bay Hill, Woods sank a 24-foot birdie on the par-4 18th hole to win his fifth consecutive event and tie Ben Hogan with 64 victories. A year later, Woods returned to Bay Hill and sank another winning, 72nd-hole birdie putt — this time a 16-footer. The putt completed a five-stroke comeback against Sean O'Hair and was Woods' first victory since his return two tournaments earlier from reconstructive knee surgery.

"It's a joke," Begay said of Woods' ability to seize the moment.

What Woods' five-shot win at Bay Hill in 2012 lacked in dramatics, it made up for in significance.

Following his Thanksgiving 2009 car crash in Isleworth, Woods' personal life and golf game had been targets for endless criticism, analysis and speculation.

In the months after news quickly leaked of Woods' serial infidelity, he would endure a high-profile divorce, lose sponsorships, suffer a severe dip in popularity and struggle on the golf course like never before.

The best player of his generation also embarked on a radical swing change with instructor Sean Foley, who teaches out of Orange County National in Winter Garden.

At Bay Hill last March, Woods and the game of golf were re-energized.

"It was nice to see, it was nice to see for golf, looking down 18 and seeing all those people running out on the fairway," Foley said. "It's fascinating to me when I read Tiger is one of the most-disliked athletes in America. I'm like, 'Does anybody come to a tournament lately?'"

Woods remains the hottest ticket in the game, as seen on a chilly, breezy morning just after sunrise in Palm Beach Gardens.

Hundreds of people surrounded the first tee a few weeks ago at PGA National to witness Woods' first shot during his pro-am at the Honda Classic. Within a few holes, the gallery had grown to more than a thousand.